74 replies to this topic

[cre8ive]

With cichlids trial/carnage or error, Haplachromis family mainly so colonies of Blues/Yellows, Fronties, Trophious couple of male peacocks , basically if you want peace and harmony in your tank DONT ADD FEMALES!!!  Makes the boys crazy and aggressive, even a simple water change or falling barometric pressure will make the boys get "frisky" and then start digging your tank to bits so your forever replanting plants and stopping rocks from falling and cracking your glass.But I did have breeding colonies and just let them "spit" in the tank. every 6 months check filters to see white electric Blues/yellows in the filter due to lack of sunlight/UV from being sucked in the filters when babies. The biggest help I can give is buy your fish all around the same size as it will only end in tears when you introduce that $100 trophious and your Fronty takes a shine to it within 10 seconds   

[Liberty]

Very good tips. I've only got two females in my tank, however the male species I do have are easy with most other cichlids so no fighting should go on. The only one that can be a 50/50 is the Rainbow Shark. I've got two Electric Yellows that I hope to breed in the future and all fish have been introduced at the same size.

 

It is my first proper aquarium so I'm still new to all of this. So far everything is going really good though. I'm really happy with it!

[cre8ive]

Gaz you will be fine with the shark he's neutral and won't bother anything, personally if you want a stunning tank just keep a male from different specie of cichlids the only ones that look the same are the yellows , they are really hard to sex generally you'd buy a group of 10 as its hard to get a female so improve your odds and buy a few as there are more males born than females something like 3-1 I think? But if you want to make money by breeding go for it but one tank leads to 2 , then 4 then you have a full blown addiction !

[Liberty]

Ha ha, nah I don't think I'd be going that hard. My money is better spent elsewhere. It's just a hobby. If I was to breed 'em it'd be for fun, not to try and gain any sort of profit out of it. It would definitely help in lowering my costs of maintaining the aquarium itself I guess. I got the male and female mainly cause they look really cool, and the breeding factor was just to try it out I guess. I've still got a long way to go before they're mature enough though. They're still like 2 cm long.

[cre8ive]

You cant sex Yellows that young about 6-8 months at best males get a big head(  ) and have a more elongated Dorsal fin where as the females have a rounder ending to their Dorsal fin basically look smaller, it took 6 years before my Fronties started to breed and well over 12 months for my Yellows, be careful that they dont interbreed either as I did have a yellow breed with a blue so be careful no to upset the gene pool! The male does go thrue quite an effort to breed with the female its pretty funky to watch  as the male is dancing like crazy .

[Liberty]

Awesome. I'll keep an eye on 'em and see whether I can distinguish between the male and female after a few months. They're the only Electric species I have so I will have no troubles with breeding with other species. Thanks for the tip once again Sandy.

[Liberty]

Spewing.

 

Tweety, the female Electric Yellow, has died.

 

She went missing for a couple of days and I could never find her. Under closer inspection of the shipwreck decoration I have in the tank, with the help of my iPhone light, I can now confirm that she was dead. I initially thought it was Avatar who ate her but doubted he could get his mouth open wide enough to swallow her. I am unsure of the exact date of death so I will just make it today.

 

RIP Tweety. 25/05/13 - 09/08/2013.

 

 

Should I buy another female Electric Yellow to try and breed with Bolt, or should I get a completely different fish?

[Adam]

Damn, Gaz!

I forgot about this thread! I need to get my tank sorted still. I've been lazy!

[Hypnotic]

Get a shark Gaz.

[Liberty]

Ha ha, I already do sort of. Just not a shark shark that you're talking about... I doubt it'd fit in my tank as a baby to be honest...

 

Damn, Gaz!

I forgot about this thread! I need to get my tank sorted still. I've been lazy!

 

That you do! Stop being lazy 'dam!

[Liberty]

Oh I forgot to mention that I did perform a 50% water change in case Tweety brought about any bad bacteria to the tank. I noticed the water was getting slightly yellowy but now it's as clear as anything. Hopefully nothing bad happens to any of my other fish...

[seanmau5]

I've recently added some more silver dollars to my tank.. I didn't realise there were a few different varieties available so I now have plain silver dollars, some spotted silver dollars and some spotted red/silver dollars. It's pretty cool watching them swim as they all school, now need to get some other fish to fill in the 'space' that the dollars leave behind.

[Liberty]

Sounds awesome man. Take some pics!

 

I think I will be spending this weekend giving my fish tank some maintenance. I might also buy one of those magnetic fish tank scrubbers just to help out with ridding the inside glass of algae build up and keep it squeaky clean. Fish seem to be doing A LOT better since I changed the water. They seem a lot more active and are taking refuge in many more places all over the tank as opposed to before where they seemed to prefer chilling out at the bottom.

[Adam]

Good news! Can't wait to get my tank out in the lounge room

[Liberty]

You better do it soon otherwise we're all gonna die of old age...

 

I was given a substrate cleaner today for free (worth $40) by one of the blokes at council. It is in the box and still brand new, completely unscathed. Might give it a run but I'm unsure whether it'll clean my substrate or just suck it all up. It's kinda in between rocks and sand...

[Adam]

Pretty good website! http://www.diyaquapros.com/

 

How is your tank going, Gaz?

[Liberty]

I was actually going to make a bit of an update with mine soon! I will get it done as soon as I can. I've bought a few more fish since the last time I posted (and want to buy two more).

 

Not to mention I want to get my small tank revived with some cool-looking small fish and possibly live plants.

[B4TT]

Little brother has breeding colonies of Tropheus, Couple of different types.

got a salt watertank too, I  got him a bicolor anglefish yesterday.

He's in a quarantine tank at the moment with some cleaner wrasse

[B4TT]

For Gary

Mucked about with the little salt water tank again today, still a massive work in progress.. much more coral to get

 

Most of it is retracted back for sleeping but you can still kind of get the idea.

[Liberty]

That'd look tops once all the coral comes to life. I really dig that clown fish as well. It's coming along very nicely man. I'm definitely up for a fresh water versus cold water competition!